Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

neogramps writes "It's been a long time coming, but the first Pandora consoles are finally rolling off of the production line. (Well, this one actually walked out the door to a customer who lived near the 'factory.') Initial estimates had put production and development at taking two months, but Murphy had other ideas. Banking issues, design problems, problems communicating with the Chinese moulding company, escalating assembly costs, and even a volcano all managed to get in the way, but the small and dedicated team soldiered on, and just over a year and a half later, the wait is coming to an end for the 4,000 pre-orderers."

2 years ago these specs would have been exciting, but with smartphones already pushing over 1ghz and 512mb ram, I don't see the appeal. Pandora seems destined to be an emulator lover's delight and not much more. Sure you can run android on it, but it only has a 600mhz processor and 256mb ram. The same specs as a motorola droid. I guess $300 is an ok price to play every console game before the playstation, but my laptop does that and has a nice big screen too. 2 years ago I would have drooled at this machine (and I did), but anymore it seems like it will be so radically obsolete in a short period of time. My phone is already portable internet enough for me. If anything, I'd much rather have a nice 8-10" tablet that I can share my phone's 3g connection with. Once the tablets start getting near the $300 price point, I think things will get pretty interesting. I guess you could say that the pandora is like the ultimate portable console, but only if you don't want to play any newer games.

Specs may not longer be the best but personally I want the full keyboard and analog controls. Perhaps if this version is successful the package can be upgraded to something more cutting edge with less delays.

The netbook also doesn't fit in my pocket, weighs much more and doesn't have built-in gaming controls. In other terms it doesn't occupy the same niche as the Pandora. (And, by the way, the Pandora also does Bluettoth.))

The Pandora serves three niches:
- Emulator and handheld homebrew lovers
- People who want a UMPC with a physical keyboard
- People who want a very small HTPC and are content with S-Video (yes, some of those have popped up in the forums)

Yes, these days netbooks offer more bang for the buck specs-wise but then again so did desktops even when the team started. It's obvious that desktops serve a different niche than notebooks and netbooks. However, so does the Pandora.

Remember, this is explicitly a niche device. The first batch was originally planned to encompass a grand total of 3,000 units, later expanded to 4,000. There will be a second batch but nobody knows if there will ever be more than 10,000 units in total. There is no intention to directly compete against Nintendo, Sony and netbook manufacturers. The main competition consists of the Gamepark Wiz and the Dingoo A320 (for the homebrew lovers) or is mostly nonexistent (for the UMPC lovers).

My PSP does that & plays all my old PSX games. I got it for $100 used. True it's a little slower & doesn't have a touchscreen, but it works really good for what I need it for. I do hope the Pandora takes off however, I'd like to see every kind of consumer entertainment electronics with an open version legally available.

These batteries get 14-16 hours in real-world tests with WiFi off - so it's not like a netbook where "14 hours" actually only gives 6 if you're running the CPU 100%. This is an actual 14-16 hours. I assume those batteries you linked do indeed give the PSP 10 hours of actual play time?... if you don't mind paying twice as much, each.

Does it run hackable linux, with off-the-shelf compatibility with your favourite tools?

Uh, yes again.

That would be a "No". Thanks for the link though.

Let me make this clear - the Pandora will almost be suitable as a desktop replacement. (form factor ignored) At launch it'll run software like OpenOffice, Firefox, Chromium, etc. - you could load it up with pen testing tools, use VNC/SSH... basically, you've got a fully featured desktop environment preinstalled on it, ready for linux apps to be loaded.

If you want enough of them, its value shoots up far above other handhelds.

Yes & right now there is a $200 difference. No where near enough value for the cost compared to a cracked PSP Slim if all you want to do with it is play games.

If all you want to do is play $50 commercial games, buy a PSP or NDS or some other big-name console and play it. This is a device for developers first, users second. Not the other way around.

Er, no. It's doomed to failure if you measure success by how much money it makes the manufacturer. That's reasonable as this is the measure most manufacturers use - however, the Pandora was never designed as a money-maker but to scratch an itch the community had. Since the device is now becoming available and the developers are already busy cranking out softare it's reasonable to assume that the itch is in the process of being scratched.

How many commercially successful devices have been launched that were aimed at developers first, users second. Unless you find favour with the 99% of users that are mere "users", it's going to be very hard to sell enough to keep the bottom line black.

Beats me - but this device isn't intended to be "commercially successful" in the way you refer.

About 25% of the people pre-ordering are developers. There could potentially be hundreds to thousands of homebrew projects within the first year - some very high quality.

The reward for us developers, is other developers creating their own dream apps.

Face it, average Joe would rather use $600 on a dedicated gaming console that fits in his pocket, a few games, and a case of beer. The Pandora doesn't have that appeal, and is doomed to failure no matter how good it may be for developers.

You clearly don't understand what "for developers first" means. Your mindset is absolutely correct for a device being sold primarily to users.

Others have replied to your other points, but I just had to reply to this one...

Yes again, PSP have been able to get online via WiFi from day one.

Seriously? Have you ever tried surfing with the PSP's browser? It is painful. It's a horrid implementation of the Gecko engine on top of a poor Wi-Fi stack. It takes over thirty seconds to download a ~5MB file from another machine on the network, and yet it's somehow still faster to view webpages through a web-based proxy running on another computer on the network

Can you buy a pandora with a credit card? Last time I tried (a few years ago) they told me they couldn't take it, after a couple of months of hearing nothing from them. I can walk into any store or any online site and buy a psp with a credit card and not have to go through any seedy international bank transfers with absolutely no guarantee I'd receive anything other than a complimentary sucker.

They said the same thing about the GP2X (Pandora's predecessor) which had all of the same sorts of launch problems, plus a really bad "joystick" unit (Analog-style stick with 8-way digital base and huge dead zones that would make Christopher Walken blanche)

Back in the GP2X days, the PSP wasn't playing PSX games yet so zodttd's "any day now" PSX emulator was the killer app, but it never really panned out since the hardware was just too weak. It could barely squeak by on SNES emulators, if you turned off a b

Are you implying that our needs have changed so much during these two years?

I'm pretty sure that the Pandora is still the most powerful portable game console out there. The battery is a dog (10+ hours of gaming), the controls are said to be more than solid, and the platform (ARM Cortex-A8) is far from obsolete.

The lack of any hardware controls for phones is definitely the killer for me in replacing my DS with my phone. I tried to play Pacman on my iPhone, and it completely failed. I didn't even bother to try it on my Android because it also lacks proper gaming controls. I have hopes that eventually Google will add a gamepad API to Android. If I could buy a control pad that I snap my Android into, and it could be seen by every game that was written to the open API, I would start to consider my phone as a hand

Viliv S5 is "only" $500, which isn't much more expensive than the Pandora. On top of that, it's not a closed platform, it's a freakin' PC, so you already have access to more software of all sorts than all those other platforms together will EVER have.

And who -doesn't- want to have a dev board with sharp solder points stuck in their pocket? And who -doesn't- want to compile everything themselves and send it via the serial port? A dev board has its place, the one you linked to would be great for a small robotics project or even a little web-enabled alarm clock or something. For replacing the Pandora? No. The entire point why we buy "consumer" electronics is that most things are simply there, we download a few binaries a few ROMs and soon we are playing Su

ARM's naming scheme is confusing -- What we know as ARM7 (such as in the GBA and many lower-end microcontollers) is an ARMv4 architecture. ARM9, IIRC, is ARMv5 architecture.

The Cortex-A8 in the Pandora is a whole different beast -- an ARMv7 architecture (The very latest ARM multi-core architecture is ARMv8, I believe), which is ARM's first super-scalar processor (meaning that some of the execution resources execute independently and in parallel if the instruction stream is suitable). They also have a rath

True. Well said.
Its kinda past its prime.
What can i do with Pandora that i cannot with an iPad or Kindle or even an iPod touch.
Naaah.
Its an idea past its prime.
Probably, if they harden it for Military usage, they will get a steady stream of money every year.

I guess you could say that the pandora is like the ultimate portable console, but only if you don't want to play any newer games.

I don't know how much they're getting for these things, but they'd be a good deal at $200 or less. S-Video out is a little minimal now but not too bad, some devices still use composite, no kidding. But show me another device with similar specs and both keyboard and touch screen under $400, and I'll be impressed. (yes, the keyboard is pretty weak, but it's more than adequate for most phone-type tasks, so if you don't need your phone converged into the device, it's pretty sweet. theoretically.) If I could pay

Actually I was under the impression that the hardware was powerful enough to be capable of running Playstation and N64 games - the GP2X, it's spiritual predecessor, was basically "everything up to Playstation". The Pandora is still allegedly the most powerful dedicated gaming handheld (compared to eg. PSP and DS) and has a good range of controls and expansion. I think that makes it reasonably interesting even though it's not as powerful as a smartphone. It'd be nice if they were able to rev the hardware

Yup, and with 256MB of RAM it's quite interesting. I currently have a Nokia 770 as my pocket computer. Coupled with a folding bluetooth keyboard, it's a relatively nice system, but feels underpowered. The Pandora is about 4 times faster, has a decent GPU, and four times as much RAM. I don't really care about it as a games console, but as a machine I can slip in a pocket and got and work in in a cafe by the sea, rather than lugging a laptop around, it looks interesting.

2 years ago these specs would have been exciting, but with smartphones already pushing over 1ghz and 512mb ram, I don't see the appeal.

It's not the CPU speed. It's the controls, and the developers behind the project.

And even if other devices have faster internals, most have such high overhead OS's that you hardly get any power. The emulator devs are excited, because just about everything in the OS can shut off when you start a game, if it isn't needed.

It's an "open source" handheld with an eager development community, and games and other apps will come quickly once the hardware is released to the wild. By the time the pre-orders are complete and anyone not in the queue will be able to purchase one (and that will take a few months at this rate), there will be dozens of games available. Give it some time.

Because there is such a vibrant open source game selection. I mean there's Tux Racer, that Civ 2 clone, that Puzzle Bobble Clone... ummm, did I mention Tux Racer?

Seriously, gaming is one area that OSS does not seem to do well in. There are very few OSS games out there, and they tend to be of poor quality and/or knockoff of old commercial games. Now compare that to the Nintendo DS's games library, which is what this will have to compete with by the way.

This is because of the cost to produce very high quality games for any platform. This is also what has been a deal killer for Linux on the desktop, but Steam will soon be ported to Linux (just anounced the Mac port) and a bunch of games will be released for Linux, mainly older ports but still. (The source engine's dedicated server has been Linux forever).

As a side note, the original Half Life, TFC, Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, and other m

Seriously, gaming is one area that OSS does not seem to do well in. There are very few OSS games out there, and they tend to be of poor quality and/or knockoff of old commercial games.

OSS doesn't tend to do very well in anything that involves a fair amount of tedium.

A game engine might conceivably be developed with F/OSS methods but the graphics (which may well require drawing a hundred variants of exactly the same thing) are going to stop being interesting long before they're completed.

The problem isn't the tedium part. F/OSS people do a lot of tedious tasks too.

The problem is, that the whole thing needs a basis which makes people interested to improve on. F/OSS people are not very good at putting together a comprehensive seed for a healthy game, as this is a quite complex task (you really need a development team with project coordinators, artists, programmers and other staff to get this done).

Two examples of successful F/OSS games originating in commercial seeds are OpenTTD http://www.op [openttd.org]

The problem is the lack of a unifying vision. With an original project you need a project leader who can decide on the design but when the workers don't like the design dictated by the leader they leave (in a company they keep working because they're paid to work on things that may not strike their fancy). If you let everybody have a say you get design by committee or just a katamari of incompatible ideas. Deriving from an existing game, whether by making a clone or an opened codebase, at least gives a specific vision that any developer joining the project can see right away and most likely enjoys. I've seen a project where the gameplay was handled opensource style, the result is an ever-morphing mess that gains and sheds features as the participants see shiny objects and that got dominated by a derivative work that was rudimentarily maintained by one dude who followed the vision of the work it was derived from. Meanwhile players complained that the well-maintained project changed too much and was a different game every week.

I mean if you want a portable game unit, well then DS has this beat hands down. Not only does it have far, far, FAR more games and most of those are of professional quality...

There isn't a single part of that statement that is true. The appeal of the Pandora is emulation. It can run MAME, SNES, DOS, Genesis, NES, Amiga, and a whole gaggle of stuff I think other people here have mentioned before. More importantly, it has a set of controls that really make that setup ideal to an enthusiast to somebody like me. It could probably even do N64, which would be totally tits.

I have a GP2X Wiz right now. It can run most of the stuff the Pandora can. Although I am a Nintendo fanboy a

Given that you'd be downloading the ROMs online, and not paying for them. So I suppose that is a narrow market for it: If you want to emulate old games, are ok with not paying for them, and want to do it a small form factor then ok. However that is a rather narrow market there. After all anyone who wants to play emulated games at home would be better served with simply running them on a regular computer (or even a game console for that matter).

I never said it was a big market. Also, nobody said Pandora was going after a big market.

After all anyone who wants to play emulated games at home would be better served with simply running them on a regular computer (or even a game console for that matter).

By that logic the DS, PSP, GBA, etc, should never have existed. Meanwhile, the technology has been around at least 4 or 5 years to play these on a portable system. A hacked PSP, for example, isn't too bad at playing SNES games. There is something to be said for having a whole gaggle of games ready to go on a system with roughly the same controls as an SNES. Actually, one of the really appealing features of a hacked

You clearly weren't around for the GP2X. Developers flock to these devices. For every high quality x86 linux FOSS game, there's about 20 on these handhelds. For quality and quantity, it even has the homebrew communities for the NDS and PSP (combined) beat.

Plus, there's the emulators.

And all the non-gaming stuff you can use it for.

to $200 (for the unit and all accessories).

But how much will you spend on games? $130 is a small difference if it saves me having to buy a netbook, too. I can take notes on this thing anywhere, browse the web, practice draw

So..... a more accurate headline would be "First Pandora Console Reaches Developer"? Time to market is the time until there's an offering in the market a normal customer would buy, which is why every other console bothers so much with launch day games. In a few months it's called summer and console sales are at their lowest, so in practice nobody will look at this before the autumn.

It's an "open source" handheld with an eager development community, and games and other apps will come quickly once the hardware is released to the wild. By the time the pre-orders are complete and anyone not in the queue will be able to purchase one (and that will take a few months at this rate), there will be dozens of games available. Give it some time.

They're using a "PowerVR SGX530" in there, and IIRC the PowerVR chips don't usually have FOSS drivers, so you might be SOL on that software front.

While true, they are currently using the best SGX530 driver released to date. It's available to you, in case you want to roll your own distro or go with Ubuntu or Gentoo instead. The newest one handles OGL ES 1.1/2.0, and works with X11 with a < 2% performance penalty. (Windowed Quake3!... if you so desire)

All the hardware has either FOSS drivers or publicly available binary blobs.

Do you want a box full of crappy, buggy, half implemented OSS chips that don't do anything good, a lot of things partially, and are all around useless because the devs realized that there isn't an opensource 3d graphics chip thats ready, with all the supporting hardware and software NOW. There isn't an opensource processor with supporting hardware and reference implementations NOW.

Apologies on using the term "commercial chips." There are several companies that make good coin selling chips with open designs. I should have said chips for which the designs are closed.

My initial question was about the status of the software and hardware in terms of openness. I mean, I still buy non-open hardware all the time, especially on my primary machines, however in terms of buying a secondary device just for gaming, I would actually be much more likely to fork over my money for a device running bot

All the people who pre-ordered where investors, anything else is in fact a lie.
I believe for the second batch they will probably raise prices by a bit and automate some parts of the process which they did manually on the first run.
I long for mine and hope I get it before my trip to london in july.

What you're getting with the Pandora is a hand-held, arm powered laptop - umpc if you prefer - with OpenGLES 2.xaccelerated graphics. Play your videos and music with it. Mix music, browse the web, do your normal desktop stuff with it, emulate arcade games, NES games, or, potentially, N64 games. Tinker with it to your heart's content. Put Android OS on it. Develop your own games for it. Or play some of the games the development community's been working on, or ported.

My point being that the Pandora comes with d-pad and 2 analog controllers built into the system as well as a full thumb keyboard. Certainly it's twice the weight and size (about the size of an original Nintendo DS), but with good reason.

It doesn't matter what either of us say, the market will be a final arbiter of this beastie...

For example, let’s take a look at the iPhone 3GS. It’s commonly rumored to contain a PowerVR SGX 535, which is capable of processing 28 million triangles per second (Mt/s). There’s a driver file on the phone that contains “SGX535” in the filename, but that shouldn’t be taken as proof as to what it actually contains. In fact, GLBenchmark.com shows the iPhone 3GS putting out approximately 7 Mt/s in its graphics benchmarks. This initially led me to believe that the iPhone 3GS actually contained a PowerVR SGX 520 @ 200 MHz (which incidentally can output 7 Mt/s) or alternatively a PowerVR SGX 530 @ 100 MHz because the SGX 530 has 2 rendering pipelines instead of the 1 in the SGX 520...

But indeed, it's confirmed elsewhere to be an SGX535. So how then can the Pandora (with an underclocked SGX 530) beat it in OpenGL benchmarks? Lower

My Nokia 770 and a folding keyboard fit together in an inside jacket pocket. The Pandora is a similar size to the 770 alone (0.4mm taller, 0.5mm deeper) and weights the same amount. The 770 fits very comfortably in a jacket pocket, without deforming the outline at all - it's smaller than a large wallet.